Breakthrough Research Shows Role of Study in Learning

Education policymakers have long assumed that students who learn more have been taught more effectively. A startling new study conducted by an international consortium of scholars at Peutêtre University in Toronto has thrown this assumption into question. According to project director Pascal Feldspar, students who take a course in a subject—and study it—show more learning gains in the subject than students who do not. While gains varied slightly from one section of a course to the next, the starkest differences were between those who took a course and those who did not, and those who did the work and those who did not.

“It is too early to generalize the findings,” said Feldspar, “but we found, for instance, that students who took French for a year, and did their homework, showed significantly more learning gains in French by the end of the year than students who took no French.” The same applied to geometry, ancient history, piano, and Shakespeare. “We gave fifty students a test on Henry IV, Part 1,” he said, waving a copy of the play at us. “They were asked to identify a series of quotes, explain their meaning, and discuss their relation to the work as a whole. Before anyone had read Henry IV, performance on the test was uniformly poor. Then we split them up into an experimental group and a control group. At the end of the study, the members of the experimental group—the ones who studied the play—performed better than the control group by more than two standard deviations. Put simply, the more you study, the more you learn. Of course it’s more complicated than that, but that’s the idea.”

When asked about indirect exposure to a subject, Feldspar pondered for a moment. “We haven’t conducted any experiments on this yet,” he replied, “but our hypothesis is that indirect exposure to a subject plays a role in learning it as well.” He added that students who took courses but did no work showed negligible progress. “You learn something from just being in the environment,” he said, “but it appears that you learn a great deal more if you study the material, day after day.”

Asked whether the researchers had used standardized tests for their experiment, Feldspar shook his head vigorously. “You see, the American standardized tests don’t contain much subject matter,” he explained. “Their emphasis is on skills. In our study, we used tests that were directly related to what students had learned in the course.” Even then, he said, the tests didn’t show everything. “We know well that the test can’t measure all that was taught, and that the students’ performance isn’t an exact indicator of how much they learned.” All the same, he said, the test results showed differences between students who had studied a subject and students who hadn’t. “There are always some who study and study and still don’t learn,” he said, “but on the whole, so far, it appears that students who study a subject have a certain learning edge in that subject.”

Other scholars were quick to dismiss the findings. “The Peutêtre findings rest on the long-disproven axiom that you can only learn subject matter through a transmission model,” said Lorraine Caulk, professor of educational neurobehavior at Instructors College in Iowa City. “In fact, research has shown that when we empower children as self-initiating scholars, they start to exhibit strategic thought behaviors without the hierarchical modeling of traditional task performance.”

“I’m not sure what that means,” retorted Feldspar. “If Dr. Caulk would care to clarify her statement, I’d be happy to try to respond to it.” Dr. Caulk replied that she was using standard research terminology and that Dr. Feldspar should acquaint himself with the literature.

At this time it is unclear whether the findings at Peutêtre will have any impact on the classroom. “I like the gist of it—that we should teach actual subject matter,” said Nellie Nekogda, principal of the High School for Innovative Thinking in New York City. “The problem is, we have no money for books, and we have to bring up our test scores in ELA. I’d love to do it, though, if we could get the resources and the support.” She leaned back in her chair. “My reformation, glittering o’er my fault,” she mused, quoting from Henry IV, Part 1. “It has been years since I thought about that play. How great it would be to teach it here. Some day,” she said, “some day.”

23 Comments

Splendid suggestion—that academic study is related to academic learning! Unorthodox, and of course it runs counter to the Common Core and all other EdReform Initiatives in the U.S. at present, but a pleasant old-timey idea, anyway. Kudos to Senechal! Will Fitzhugh

Well, I’m not persuaded. I read a story somewhere about someone who guessed randomly on some test and managed to pass it anyway. Also, this notion messes with my longstanding theory that best practice is to guess and hope for the best. In my experience, the very wealthiest and therefore most successful people in these United States don’t bother with things like evidence or study before prescribing plans for education, so why should I?

Are you suggesting that wearing tea bags on my head and fighting for tax breaks for the very wealthiest Americans will not hasten my acquisition of the very billions of dollars these tax breaks are designed to protect? That all the cash I’ve invested in torches and pitchforks has been for naught?

Well, I don’t want to put it quite so grimly. You still have the opportunity to invest in a few high-growth products, like skin conductance bracelets, hidden video cameras, and dazzling formulas that tell us how much we add to the world.

Ken Mortland

With a collegiate background in experimental psychology, I have the foundations of statistical analysis upon which to draw. So, my initial reaction is, “Well, duh!. Those in a transmission model learning environment and who study do better than those in the same environment but don’t study.”. I’m at a loss as to imagine where to go next.

It would be more meaningful, if the control factor had been quality of teaching, assuming you could effectively manipulate that variable. If the degree of learning under that hypothesis had been negligible, we’d have something.

However, I’m reminded of something from my student teaching days. In a high school class of seniors taking Intro to Psychology, we had a classic none studier. He never participated in discussion nor demonstrated knowledge of the concept under discussion. Yet, on the final exam he pulled down a solid “C”. both the supervising teacher & I were surprised, to say the least. seems there was really some learning going on behind those glased eyes.

rrhake

Denver Gallentine

Interesting. I guess I could use the analogy of learning being akin to being in the sun. A little exposure give you a little tan, but the more/longer you expose yourself to a subject or the sun the more it effects you. I think we find this in all aspects of our life. – Denver

The Data Team that in which I have participated for the last several years has consistently found the same results. We called it PRP (Progeress Through Repetition). It seems to work. A majority of kids passed the AP Exam in an urban-“under-performing”- district. The idea was simply to teach the material, and then test following the format of the AP Exam. We found that the majority who took the course and studied hard, as evidenced by improving test scores throughout the year, were ultimately MUCH more likely to be successful on the AP Exam. We also found that the same students were more likely to do better in a subsequent AP course than those students who were “new” to AP courses.
Bottom Line–Good teaching is hard work, and so is being a good student.

Reblogged this on Capitan Typo's Adventures in Education and commented:
It’s always worth remembering that the majority of the factors identified by Hattie as benefitting student academic achievement are are attributed to the behaviours and values of the student themselves.

Night Musing

“I like the gist of it—that we should teach actual subject matter,” said Nellie Nekogda, principal of the High School for Innovative Thinking in New York City. “The problem is, we have no money for books, and we have to bring up our test scores in ELA.”

rrhake

Of the same genre as Senechal’s (2012) http://www.dianasenechal.com/ masterful “Research Breakthrough! Silver Bullet Found” are several articles by the late physics education guru Arnold Arons: (a) “Educational Practices – an Expert View of Current Trends” [Arons (1973)] and (b) “An expert visit to the cognitive domain”[Arons (1984)].

Arons was influenced by Frank Sullivan’s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Sullivan_(writer) Mr. Arbuthnot, the cliche expert who futilely battled the banal in popular writing. Fortunately, Arbuthnot lives on in essays by Ben Yagoda (2001?) and Frank Prial (2006).

And also – you know – that being said, in real time and for texters and googlers, the bottom line is that the imperial concerns of the real-time marketplace demand use of awesome and amazing cliches not only prior to, but at the end of the day, around the clock, and 24/7.

Robert Hansen

Prof-J

Wait just a minute! What about sleep learning, book(s) under the pillow, roommate whispering in your ear learning? And… I saw a Science Channel program that if you run electricity through the brain you may remember what you learned in past lives negating the need to learning in this century!

As of November 2017, she teaches English, American civilization, and British civilization at the Varga Katalin Gimnázium in Szolnok, Hungary. From 2011 to 2016, she helped shape and teach the philosophy program at Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science & Engineering in New York City. In 2014, her students released the inaugural issue of their philosophy journal, CONTRARIWISE, which has international participation and readership.